A major problem confronting the various makers and users of non-recordable and recordable data storage media such as compact disks (CD), digital versatile disks (DVD), super audio CDs (SACD), enhanced video disks (EVD), recordable compact disks (CD-R) and recordable digital versatile disks (DVD-R) is the unauthorized reproduction or copying of information by unauthorized manufacturers, sellers, and/or users. Such unauthorized reproduction or duplication of data storage media is often referred to as piracy. Piracy may occur in a variety of ways, including consumer level piracy at the point of end use as well as wholesale duplication of data, substrate and anti-piracy information at the commercial level. Regardless of the manner, piracy of data storage media deprives legitimate digital content providers and manufacturers of significant revenue and profit.
Attempts to stop piracy at the consumer level have included the placement of electronic anti-piracy signals on information carrying substrates along with the information sought to be protected. The machine readers and players of such data storage media are configured to require the identification of such anti-piracy signals prior to allowing access to the desired information. Theoretically, consumer level duplications are unable to reproduce these electronic anti-piracy signals on unauthorized copies and hence result in duplicates and copies that are unusable.
However, numerous technologies to thwart such consumer level anti-piracy technologies have been and continue to be developed. Moreover, commercial level duplications have evolved to the point that unauthorized duplicates may now contain the original electronic anti-piracy circuit, code, etc. For example, commercial level duplication methods include pit copying, radio frequency (RF) copying, “bit to bit” copying and other mirror image copying techniques which result in the placement of the anti-piracy signal on the information carrying substrate of the duplicate along with the information sought to be protected. Other technologies commonly used by hackers include the modification of the computer code in order to remove anti-piracy (also referred to as copy-protection or copy-proofing) features and enable unlimited access to the data.
It would be desirable to have a data storage media that can be easily identified as authentic or pirated. One anti-piracy technology aimed at combating these more sophisticated consumer and commercial level reproduction and copying practices involves the placement of ‘tags’ or authentication markers in substrates used in the construction of data storage media. Such tags or authentication markers can be detected at one or more points along the data storage media manufacturing or distribution chain or by the end use reader or player used to access the data on a particular data storage media.
The automated identification of plastic compositions used in data storage media is very desirable for a variety of applications, such as recycling, tracking the manufacturing source, antipiracy protection, and others. Furthermore, it may be desirable for automated authentication of the data storage media. Despite the foregoing, there still remains a need for methods of tagging and authenticating storage media.